Personally, I don't think that the X-Pirze will be widely accepted untill It gets some really good NEWS coverage fome somebody like CNN of Fox . I mean, sure, it has been in the NY Times and all, but I certanally know more people that watch the TV then read the NY Times. And I also think that it is grosely important that teens find out about this. If they don't get interested, then we don't have much hope of any kind of space program in 50 years.

Hopefully the X-prize and private spaceflight in general will get some attention from the major networks after the prize is claimed. I recall seeing Rutan's ship on the evening news so that could be a good sign. Considering the way televised news operates though it wouldn't be surprising if they only alot a five second blurb to the X-prize winner and move on to more "substantial" things like the latest celebrity wedding or whatever. It's a shame that many people don't read multiple news sources.

A good X-Prize movie could do a lot. I think it would look nice by the "The Right Stuff" DVD on the movie shelve too "October Sky" was on TV here a while back actually, and I was positively surprised how many of my friends actually saw and liked it. The chat about that movie turned into a discussion about the X-Prize, in fact

1. TV media loves disaster more than success. Remember Apollo 13? Before the explosion it was "as exciting as a trip to Pittsburg", after they wanted to put TV crews on the Lovells' lawn.

2. Celebrity anything is big. What celebrity could kick off the XPRIZE Cup event? Tom Hanks? Ron Howard? if the Cup is in California, Gov. Terminator? Come on! an action actor, whose second language is English, becoming Governor?! How about John Glenn or Chuck Yeager? Yang Liwei (Food for thought)?

3. Space movie about who or what? Von Braun? Goddard? The early Russian program? The current TV show "Enterprise"? Dennis Tito?

4. Is Lance Bass or some other teen idol interested in a suborbital flight?

Anyone remember a film called "Those magnificent men in their flying machines"? Besides having an unfashionably long name, it's really quite good movie. I think there's a premise for an X-prize movie (Obviously, without any degradation of subject or foul play...)

. . . as long as we don't have to fight a duel at altitude with blunderbusses!

Agreed

Anyway, the movie should be done to fuel a layman's interest to the X-Prize competition, instead of X-Prize afficionado's interest to visit the movie theatre. Also, the movie should not hurt any of the contestants. I'm very confident a movie that is both (roughly) true to reality and enjoyable for the grand audience is well doable.

In high school, we storyboarded a movie about a student who fantasized about space flight.... unfortunately, there was no real solution to the story. Had we predicted the X-Price concept then, it'd had been made into a "real" movie (via S-VHS, obviously)

XPRIZE vendor SpaceDev has scored a marketing first, auctioning private satellite launch service on eBay. For millions of people eBay is part of their daily routine. The culture of private space access has taken one more step!

If the Russians offer a "space honeymoon" for 40 million dollars, an XPRIZE vehicle could be used for a "space wedding" for 200,000 dollars.Now that would be news!

Russia touts "space honeymoon" for 40 million dollars
MOSCOW (AFP) Dec 21, 2003
Despite banning marriages in space, Russia is offering newlyweds the chance to swap Venice or the Niagara Falls for a cosmic honeymoon romance by buying a 40-million-dollar ticket to space, officials said Sunday.
Russia's Rosaviakosmos space agency is proposing together with US firm Space Adventures for couples to fly together to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Russian Soyuz space craft, said Rosaviakosmos spokesman Sergei Gorbunov.

"Under our contract with Space Adventures we have an option for sending two space tourists at once on a Soyuz. So theoretically, young married couples could make use of this possibility," he told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The asking price for a 10-day visit to the ISS is around 20 million dollars (16 million euros), a sum only two space tourists -- Californian businessman Dennis Tito and South Africa Internet millionaire Mark Shuttleworth -- have so far been willing to pay.

Both tourists jaunts were organised by Space Adventures. The price for a couple would be twice that amount.

Candidates, who would travel on board one spaceship accompanied by a professional astronaut, would have to show they are in a good health and undergo eight to 10 months of training, the official said.

In addition, "they will have to prove they don't have bad habits, money from illegal sources and don't belong to any terrorist organisation," Gorbunov added.

The Russian space official did not specify whether sex would be permitted for the space-bound honeymooners.

Astronauts are banned from having sex in space because of the possible risks to the embryo if a female cosmonaut became pregnant.

In August this year, Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, 41, married 27-year-old Yekaterina Dmitriyeva in space, although the bride remained firmly on the earth while he was aboard the orbiting space station.

Malenchenko went ahead with the wedding despite the opposition of his superiors at Rosaviakosmos, who saw the union as a potential breach of security and stressed that in future "space marriages will be forbidden".

Space Adventues, the Arlington, Virgina-based firm, which brokered the first two tourist space flights in 2001 and 2002, has signed a contract with Rosaviakosmos to fly two more tourists to the ISS in 2004-2005.

Russia and the United States, the major partners in the 16-nation ISS project, have clashed in the past over Moscow's keenness to raise money for its cash-strapped space program by selling tourist tickets to the ISS.

Russia sends Soyuz rockets to the ISS every six months on so-called "taxi missions".